


insurresine, dua capo

by Ashling



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, dance, lowkey tragic, very extreme UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 03:21:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14511438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: (Sci-fi AU, for a prompt) It's been a while since they last met, and now he's an admiral, she's a queen. They have only a short ride in his ship together, and there's little they can say, very little they can do. They dance.insurresine: the original variation of the borgues dance. Both partners put their right hand on their hip or keep their right hand free. It was invented by soldiers during the Twin Rebellions and used to seduce each other or just pass the time, knowing an attack could come at any second and they wanted their right hands free to grab a weapon if necessary.dua capo: two leaders; when the lead role in the dance switches from person to person at least once





	insurresine, dua capo

**Author's Note:**

> blame it on the bachata.
> 
> this should all be pretty understandable via context/Latin roots, but if you'd like a glossary, there's one in the end notes.

Tommy watched Esme through the door of his room as she hunched over her wristpad, speaking very softly on a call to her second-in-command. When he had set out for the Assembly that morning, he had hoped to see her there amongst all the other leaders, but he hadn’t thought that she’d end up on his ship. Thank the terrorists for that, then. For a trip, however short, with Esme. No, not Esme. He had taken to thinking of them as Admiral of B13-HM and Queen of the Wanderers; or better, he and she. It was simpler. Fuck, it was simpler. He tried to believe that.

She ended the call and came in with a cursory look around. He tried to imagine his room through her eyes: the perfect circle of it, the low mat in the corner, the table and chairs, no decoration. Not quite embarrassing, but not a place to entertain guests.

If she had an opinion of the place, she didn’t voice it. “You can jettison me on one of XT-77’s moons. My people will pick me up from there.”

“Why not deliver you directly to them?”

She sat down in a chair across from him. “You’re a Dweller now. Your ship won’t be allowed within a deci-lightyear of my fleet.”

“A Dweller. Is that what I am.”

“Yes, Admiral.” She drew out the three syllables of his formal title with an ironic gleam in her eye.

“Does that make you angry?”

“Why would it? Each child may choose which parent they will follow. You chose the way of your father.”

“As John’s children chose you.”

“As my children chose me, yes. Though at that point, it wasn’t a choice between parents, was it.” She rubbed the gold disk that hung round her neck, slowly, between two fingers.

Right. He produced two bottles from under his desk and carefully pulled the film off the top of them before handing one over to her.

“Here’s to John. Rest in peace,” he said.

“Rest in peace,” she repeated. They tapped the bottles together, then drank.

Once she finished her glass, she carefully removed her ceremonial red scarf. Then she grabbed at her right sleeve with her left hand and yanked; the velcro parted, and pretty soon the dress was only a pile of soft pink material that she tossed over the back of her chair. Underneath the dress, it turned out, a suit of the thinnest black body armor available. This, too, she removed, although it took longer, with so many buckles. Finally, it was just the last layer, a black shirt and leggings, and the ceremonial scarf, which she draped across her neck once more.

“It’s warm in here,” she said. Which was true; it was a matter of inadequate insulation between his room and the generator room. He’d already stripped down to his undershirt and trousers to compensate.

Still. “You come to every diplomatic event expecting to rip your dress off?”

“Don’t you?”

“Perhaps I would, if I took to wearing dresses.”

“Better that and gear underneath than a uniform and an undershirt. Cotton’s not going to save your life.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

As they drank, they got to talking about their family, such as it was; Katie’s new pet, Arthur’s new wife. By tacit agreement, nothing political, nothing of the people that had tried to kill them two hours earlier. That would all be sorted, but separately, not together. Fuck but he’d missed this; a mind like his own, a woman with burdens like his own, and all the old memories hanging in the back of his mind, stirring and whispering: _it wasn’t all bad. It was not all the stuff of nightmares. She was there._

“We should meet again,” he found himself saying. “I know that Wanderers don’t care much for hubs, but we’ve become a city, just last year. Cleared the population limit, and we could use the extra hands for the moon harvest. It would only take a temporary stay of your ban, and I could get the mayor to—”

“Tommy.”

“—sign off on it, easily. Alright, I understand. But we should meet. Tarvis and Wainhull are rising in the west, and if they form an alliance—”

“We’re not engaging. We’re a fleet. If there’s a war, we flee. It was a miracle I attended Assembly at all, and that was before the bomb.”

“Esme, don’t you—”

“Tommy. No.”

He looked away sharply.

The golden glow of the pseudosol lining the bottom of the wall was melting into a molten orange around them. Night was falling; how appropriate. This was his cue, he knew, for him to say something about the passing of time, about the need for sleep, about the convenient guest pod only a few tracks down the hall, but fuck he the words stuck leaden in his throat.

The scrape of her chair across the floor was of such a high pitch, so slow and deliberate, that it gave him the sensation of opening the wrong door and facing sudden gunfire. Perhaps she would cut him to punish even the unspoken suggestion—but no, that was wishful thinking. He couldn’t hear her stockinged feet on the floor at all. He kept expecting to hear the door open and then close behind her.

Suddenly there was something at the base of his skull, her hand, her left hand, gripping his hair tightly, tilting his head up and towards her, demanding his full attention. When he met her gaze, it was steel on steel. The fringe of her scarf brushed against his bare knee. With the heel of her palm resting on his breastbone and her thumb on his throat, she could feel it when he swallowed.

“You owe me _aligata_ ,” she said.

It was the dance they were meant to do, the incredibly slow, stiff, and simple five-measure set of steps repeated over and over at each Assembly, once with each leader. He had done it a hundred times under the soft, dark drapes of the Assembly flags, or at least with a hundred different leaders. He could imagine doing that with her very easily.

Or he could imagine something else.

He put his hand on her waist so that his little finger went along the ridge of her hip. If he tugged her forward now, if she let herself fall forward, she would be in his lap, her thighs heavy on his own. Her hair would be within reach. At a tug of that silver pin, it would waterfall over her shoulders...

“I only have music for _borgues_ ,” he said.

There was not even the slightest flicker in her dark eyes. “ _Une capo_?”

_“Dua capo.”_

“Well. You owe me a dance.” Her left hand unclenched and her left wrist rested on his shoulder, but her right hand remained on his throat as he rose to his feet.

Still locked on her eyes, he reached for the ceremonial red scarf around her neck, which was surprisingly soft despite the heavy gold embroidery. His fingers closed around it, and he paused, asking this time instead of challenging. When she did nothing, he slipped it off her neck and laid it carefully over the back of his chair.

At a command from him, his wristpad began to play music. He’d left it on the table, but it was loud enough. They both shifted their weight slightly to the balls of their feet; she put her hands on his back, he put his on the nape of her neck. She dropped her stare as she picked up focus on the beat.

The music was slow and slightly hollow at first, a rhythm of hand drums only, and he could feel her relaxing as he took up the more fluid motions of the follow, responding to the pressure of her hands, reacting to the directions given by her momentum. Then the singer’s part came in, high and reverberating, all exquisite vocal waves, slightly fractured with glottal stops and left hanging in the air. Her eyes snapped up to meet his.

“ _Lamentate_ are meant for funerals,” she said. “Not for _borgues._ ”

They managed to keep in step, but she had lost the flow of communication from before; it was as if her leading was speaking with a slight stutter. Unease spread from her to him and back again through the skin. Perhaps if he tried to explain...

“In my city, it is understood,” he murmured, “that there are more reasons to mourn than there are deaths.”

The steps had become simple; no turns, no pivots, only the deceptively gentle back and forth, her eyes on his. “You think a dance could be a reason to mourn?”

“It depends on how the dance ends.”

She went on for a few beats, still only in the basic back and forth, and then stopped, feet going flat on the floor.

A great surge of disappointment washed over him. He’d thought they had more time. Not much, but minutes at least. If they didn’t share mourning, what did they share? Everything was an ending with her. With Esme. Look it in the face, call it what it was: he didn’t know how to touch her without thinking of losing her later. Call it a curse.

He commanded the song off, and she commanded her wristpad to put a new one on. Well, not new. This one had been around since before the star-ending Eleventh War, and it was a classic: a low, throaty alto over the plucked strings of an ancient guitar, lilting and dark. Old-fashioned, but a perennial favorite of the pavement-dancing crowd. A gift to hips.

This time, she put her left hand on his back, her right hand on her own hip. He raised an eyebrow, but formed up in the proper position; left hand on her shoulder, right hand on his own hip too. _Borgues insurresine,_ and their bodies closer because of it; her left leg between his, his between hers, when they swayed close _._

“It’s been some time since I last danced the old variation,” he said.

Was that a smile? “Once a rebel, always a rebel.”

“Ah, but that war ended before either of us were born.”

“It’s in the blood.”

He shook his head once. “I think the Eleventh has taken up all of mine.”

“We’re Wanderers, Thomas.” She guided him swiftly and securely through two turns and a crossover, then brought him close again. “There are wars in us so old that their names have been forgotten.”

Now it was his turn to smile. “I thought I was a Dweller now.”

She didn’t look up, just rolled her left palm against his back in a way that his body followed, rippling sinuous against her in a way they could both feel, leg to thigh to gut to chest.  “You don’t move like one of them,” she said.

At a quick pivot, the coil of her hair lost a strand; it tumbled down over his wrist in a faint wisp and he didn’t dare speak. He had to rein in his breath.

Her eyes flickered up to meet his, then down to his lips, then away. She tapped two fingers against his shoulder blade three times, asking to switch, and he responded yes with the same two fingers, three taps against the nape of her neck.

When he took the lead, she closed her eyes. He was tempted to see how far it went, this trust; he navigated her close to the walls, around the table, but she never faltered. At one point, he slid both hands down to her hips and lifted for a few seconds, straining. Her feet just barely left the floor, but she smiled.

They went on like this as long as the song lasted, switching every now and then. There was nothing sweet about her, but there was something sweet in the way she let him touch her, reverent and careful, not because she was fragile but because she was precious. When the song ended, he quickly commanded a new one from his wristpad, another classic, this one a little less coy, a little more content. They went on dancing.

“Have you ever used _borgues insurresine_ for its original purpose?” he said, before she could mention the time or the change in song.

“Yes.” That could be the end of it, if she wanted. But when he gave her time, she eventually added, “It was another soldier, Aishe and I, sneaking into a ballroom. Knives instead of guns strapped to our legs, hidden in our skirts. One of my earliest assassinations.”

He tried to picture it; she’d started young, he knew, even younger than he had. “A bad memory, then.”

“A good memory. We got away.”

“Do you think you’ll ever use the _borgues_ for that again?”

Very quietly: “No.”

“Do you want to?”

They had met then, during the war, in the dense jungle of a now-dead planet, Tommy irritated that he had to escort his brother’s bride-to-be through the center of a civil war, Esme angry that she had to be married at all. So young, but neither of them reckless. Too scarred for that. Still too scarred for that.

Looking at him directly, she said, “I want this room to stay red.” It was the basic back and forth again now, simple and secure, rocking close and then stepping away.

“For how long?” Selfishly, he hoped for some hours within which he could allow himself to be comfortable. Or even better, forever. That would be alright, wouldn’t it.

“I want to dance, Tommy.”

He murmured a command to his wristpad, freezing the pseudosol sunset in streaks of fire on the wall around them.

“Then let’s dance.”

They went on, skin on skin, sweat and held breaths, and he wanted, he wanted, he wanted. Tomorrow he would leave her behind, watching as she became a tiny black dot on the grey vastness of the moon, and her fleet would come in after and carry her beyond reach. Tomorrow he would give it up.  But today, he spread his fingertips on the small of her back. He closed his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> GLOSSARY (in order of appearance)
> 
> The Assembly: an organization of intergalactic leaders whose annual meetings function primarily as a venue for multilateral diplomacy
> 
> B13-HM: a city-state
> 
> Wanderers: a group of nomadic people who travel in large group fleets, making a living by finding precious metals and minerals in asteroids
> 
> XT-77: a neutral planet owned by the Assembly
> 
> Dweller: a mildly derogatory term used for non-Wanderers
> 
> wristpad: a computing device about the size and shape of a square-faced watch, controlled by commands given in verbal shorthand
> 
> pseudosol: a ship bedroom lighting system that mimicks solar light throughout the day, including a fade in and fade out at sunrise and sunset, in order to keep the circadian rhythms of the traveler consistent
> 
> aligata: a simple formal dance used to symbolize goodwill and cooperation, seen in both Assembly opening ceremonies and legislatures of all kinds around the galaxy 
> 
> borgues: a slow, rhythmic dance with many variations. It is custom for newlyweds to dance the borgues after their wedding dinner, as a demonstration of their equality and compatibility.
> 
> une capo: one leader; when the dance is led all the way through by the same person
> 
> dua capo: two leaders; when the lead role in the dance switches from person to person at least once
> 
> insurresine: the original variation of the borgues, in which both partners put their right hand on their hip or keep their right hand free. It was invented by soldiers during the Twin Rebellions, and used to seduce each other or just pass the time, knowing an attack could come at any second and they wanted their right hands free to grab a weapon if necessary.


End file.
